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Attacks on Fleeing Civilians

In addition to the major attacks documented above, there were numerous additional cases in which Russian forces bombed, shelled, or shot at civilian vehicles in Chechnya. Throughout the conflict, road travel was hazardous, trapping many civilians in an active war zone. Following are a few of the many incidents of random attacks on fleeing civilians which resulted in casualties. The information available to Human Rights Watch about each of these incidents is insufficient to determine whether Russian forces intentionally attacked civilians or whether, if a legitimate military target was attacked, the force used was proportionate to the military advantage pursued.

On September 23, a Russian shell hit a small GAZ truck traveling past the defunct North Caucasus poultry farm located between Geldagen and Avtury in southern Chechnya. The young driver, who was an oil worker from Serzhen-Yurt, and a female passenger were killed instantly. They had gone to the market to buy groceries for the family of the young man’s brother, who had been killed the week before, and were on their way to drop off the groceries.¹⁰⁴

On October 1, 1999, thirty-five-year-old Nursolt Gurmanaev was driving with his brother and nephew from Grozny to Chervlyonnaya (the scene of the October 5 attack described above). Between Tolstoi-Yurt and Chervlyonaya, at around 5:00 p.m., they noticed Russian planes flying overhead and soon found themselves under attack:

There was a Zhiguli ahead of us, and it was destroyed by a direct hit from the plane. All the people in the Zhiguli were killed, I heard later that it was [occupied by] one family. When we saw this, my brother cried out, ‘Jump out of the car and take shelter!’ I was a bit late [taking shelter], because the plane dropped a bomb not far away and the thigh bones in both my legs were broken from shrapnel.¹⁰⁵

Gurmanaev was brought to a hospital in Tolstoi-Yurt by his brother and nephew, where he received emergency medical care.

Said-Emi Saidkhadzhiev, aged forty-two, decided to try to evacuate his family from Shali when the town came under heavy bombardment on October 5. The family car came under attack from Russian warplanes soon after leaving the town. His twelve-year-old son, Khusein Saidkhadzhiev, explained what happened next: “As we were on the road, there was an explosion near our car, and we were overturned. I received shrapnel wounds everywhere, my left leg was broken with a double fracture. The others were only bruised.”¹⁰⁶ They were able to return to the hospital in Shali, but the doctors had left the hospital because of the shelling, so the family had to provide first aid themselves. Khusein suffered a double leg fracture, an arm fracture, and extensive shrapnel wounds that will require skin grafts.

Kisa Akhataeva left from Urus-Martan and headed for the Ingush border on October 31, 1999 in a two-car convoy with relatives. Shortly before they reached Shalazhi around midday, two Russian warplanes started circling overhead, and suddenly launched rockets at the cars. The rockets missed, and Akhataeva’s car managed to make it to a wood to seek shelter: “We turned the car into the woods, we just managed to jump out and run away. The airplane circled around, and fired a rocket at us.” The shrapnel from the rocket wounded Akhataeva, as well as five or six other civilians from a second car which had sought shelter in the woods. The attack took place on a clear day, “it was visible that there were no rebels there.”¹⁰⁷

On November 4, 1999, medical staff and relatives of the wounded decided to evacuate the hospital in Urus-Martan because of intensive shelling in the area. They left Urus-Martan early in the morning, in a convoy of two ambulances and several private buses hired by the families of the wounded. Between Zakan-Yurt and Shaami-Yurt, at about 8:00 a.m., cars traveling ahead of the convoy came under bombardment from Russian warplanes:

Towards 8:00 a.m., they had bombarded the road completely. There had never been a rebel there [in the convoy], ever. ... If there had been rebels there, I wouldn’t have joined the convoy. They killed and wounded many.

I saw a bus, a burning Ikarus [model], this was between Zakan-Yurt and Shaami-Yurt, and a beige colored Volga, a GAZ-24 burned to the ground, then a foreign car that was burned. We stopped immediately, to wait out this bombardment, because planes were shooting rockets ... We were saved by five minutes: we didn’t reach the stretch of road they managed to bomb [before] flying away.¹⁰⁸

When Russian forces began shelling Goiskoe, a small hamlet on the southwestern outskirts of Urus-Martan, on the morning of December 7, twenty-nine year old Lom-Ali Ingaev and his elder brother decided to leave their home and walk with their cattle towards Alkhazurovo, located about five kilometers away. As they reached Alkhazurovo, they saw Russian fighter planes overhead. A white Zhiguli drove up and the driver, thirty-six year old Salambek Saslambekov, suggested that they seek shelter from the planes. The aircraft attacked soon after:

I lost one plane from my view, and looked for the second plane. At the moment I found it, I saw it launch two rockets. After the explosion, I jumped up and said to my brother that my leg was broken. My brother replied that he was wounded in the back. I asked my brother to leave me and escape, but my brother took me by the coat and dragged me down to the river.

There was a small pit, and as we reached the pit, the planes attacked again. My brother covered me with himself and got more shrapnel in his heel and foot. The man who was driving the car [Salambek Saslambekov] was killed. ... He had his head and legs broken apart.¹⁰⁹

According to Ingaev, the aircraft then turned their attention to bombing the village of Alkahnzurova itself, causing three deaths and more than twenty wounded.¹¹⁰